It was at first attributed to Tuotilo of St. Gallen. This opinion was put forward by Lessing, but it had no foundation whatever beyond the fact of Tuotilo's well-known versatility.[24] Besides, Tuotilo lived in the ninth century. But really the question of attributions does not concern us here. It matters little who he was outside the Treatise, and certainly we shall not discuss the question further. It is with the Treatise that we are concerned. We shall simply call the author Theophilus, and his work the Compendium. Let us turn to it at once. [24] Tuotilo was renowned throughout all Germany as painter, architect, preacher, professor, musician, calligrapher, Latinist, Hellenist, sculptor, and astronomer. The Compendium, which is thus known to contain the working methods of all the monastic illuminators, mosaicists, glass painters, enamellers, and so forth, throughout Germany, Lombardy, and France, consists of three books, containing altogether one hundred and ninety-five chapters of definite and special instructions in artistic matters. Book I., comprising forty chapters, treats of the preparation, mixture, and use of colours for wall-painting, panel, and parchment, _i.e._ for the decoration of churches, furniture, and books. It contains some most curious and valuable instructions for the employment of gold, silver, and other metals in the decoration of MSS.; how it should be applied; whether in leaf or as an ink; how raised and burnished, down to the minutest details of practice; how colours are to be tempered (_i.e._ mixed); what _media_ or temperings are best for each colour, according to the surface to which it is to be applied. Such is the Compendium. We need not, therefore, wonder at its popularity and the estimation in which it was held. Thirty-one chapters on glass, glass painting, enamelling, etc., form a second book, and the third and last book contains some hundred and twenty-four chapters on gold and silver work--the art of the goldsmith--in cups, chalices, vases, candelabra, shrines, and so on. It is the first book that is of most interest to us, and had we space we would have liked to quote from its pages. But as it is we can only refer the reader to the work itself. It is to be met with in various forms and editions. First, we recommend the English translation by Robert Hendrie. The oldest MS. of the work is one of the twelfth century in the Library at Wolfenbüttel. The next is in the Imperial Library at Vienna. Fragments of other copies exist in several other public libraries, but the completest copy known is that in the Harl.[25] Collection of the British Museum used by Hendrie as the basis of his translation (8°, 1847). [25] 1 Harl. MS. 3915.